Waltzing Shadows
by Courtanie
Summary: Kyle loses everything; Kenny can relate. Together in the silence of memories gone by they're drawn closer into one another.


_**A/N: Some of you saw this in my 100 themes awhile back. Theme was shadows and I was particularly angsty when I wrote this.**_

_**If memory serves correctly it was because one of my dogs chewed up a huge project I had.**_

_**I think. Anyways, I liked this one decently enough and decided I'd let it stand on its own. **_

_**Enjoy~**_

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Kenny McCormick knew the struggles of one on their own. He knew of the hardships, the suffering, the pain that had to be endured as one walked the streets alone in the midst of their own self-pity. It was who he was, it was the way he had become the person he was on that day.

That day that Kyle Broflovski became alone.

A fast car and a missed traffic sign could turn the world upside down in a single swoop, the redhead had found as he'd received the phone call from alone in his home that day.

But he knew better, he knew that tears and pity could never bring back the ones he had held so close before. So he opted for silence. Bitter, everlasting on his tongue and stifling the air as his emerald-glossed eyes pierced into whatever object he decided to lay them upon.

Kenny knew his pain.

He watched him carefully as he sat beside him in the un-air conditioned funeral home. He watched as he walked up to the three caskets, not uttering a sound as the entire room stayed still, gazing at the boy in preparation for a breakdown by means of his fragile heart.

But it never happened. Kenny knew it wouldn't happen. Kyle was just too smart to allow himself to fall prey to such emotion for such a meaningless cause.

Too naive to realize the need for release.

The redhead's petite form began withering, shrinking to merely nothing as he became malnourished from the depth of his despondency. His once proud, set face fell into a drooping, constant frown. His vibrant hair and eyes soon dulled and became all but former shells of what they once were; coated with apathy but screaming for help to the observant company of his poor, downtrodden best friend.

And so he tried.

The blonde took his hands in his, whispering words of comfort and advise lowly beside his ear as Kyle stared blankly over his shoulder at the chipping, green paint of the stairwell in his home. Words of assurance; foreboding of the effects of such withdrawal from society.

He knew first hand just how much it hurt. Just how much it took to try to clamber back out of such a position; that it was near impossible to do so.

Pretty words fell on deaf ears as Kyle merely took his hands back and turned to walk away and sit on the couch, staring at where the television had been before he had pawned it off for some spare cash to keep his house. Kenny stared at him for what seemed to be an endless moment in that little enclosed room, nearly bare with the loss of what had been. Dents in the carpet and spots still free of dust stood out among the normalcy of the room and screamed out the story of Kyle's past. Of his present. And most likely, the crushing reality of his future.

Kenny knew the game all too well. He knew the torment behind those green, lifeless eyes. The farce he put up in order to escape himself and the watchful eyes of others like himself.

So he sat next to him. They sat together and stared off into nothingness with only the ambience of awkward tension suspended between them like a thickening fog. After three hours of staring at the cabinet, Kenny left Kyle without another word and returned to his own empty home to reconsider his options for Kyle.

But he knew better. He knew that this was nothing that words could fix; this called for real contact: the first step in learning to march through and conquer one's emotional distraught.

He returned back to Kyle's home every day from then on, sitting on the couch and watching as the sun moved the shadows of the dwindling furniture around the room before he would head back to his home.

No words ever uttered, no sound ever passed between them. Only themselves and their empty thoughts.

The months continued as did their tradition and it became nothing more than them sitting on the bare floor, cross-legged beside each other as they stared at the now-blank wall. They observed their shadows trying to stretch away from them, to escape the reality of their routines such as the furniture had done. Kenny often had the urge to reach out towards his and try to pull it back into himself and wondered if Kyle ever had the same idea. It could make up for the loneliness, the powerful feelings overtaking their senses of self.

Instead, slowly, but surely, he found their bodies moving closer to each other, if by mere centimeters each day. Up until their hands found each others and slowly, their fingers became intertwined amongst one another's without their knowledge of even doing so.

And so now they sit and stare at a blank wall with the vision of a blank canvas stretched out before them. A vision of their future, of two wandering, lost souls twisted together in the bizarre game of chess that fate has set out for them to conquer. Bare, yet dancing in the sunlight as their shadows swoop across the board in a smooth, straight line together. Their constant companions; their essence of imagery. So continues the twirling of those with the blank faces and quiet dispositions stuck in an eternal loop as they await their destiny side by side as the sun spirals out of view and silences them completely down to their last breath.

So continues the waltz of the shadows.


End file.
